


If You Leave

by Fade



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Dads of Marmora (Voltron), Gen, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Not Canon Compliant, S4 E1 Rewrite, Season 4 Spoilers, Sort Of, in which keith leaves for the bom in secret, one moment they were glaring at him and the next they were in a group hug like what, since i'm not really sure how that happened in canon, w/o making up w/ the team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 08:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14445327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fade/pseuds/Fade
Summary: It sounds a lot likewe don’t need you anymore.





	If You Leave

In the space between goodbye's and hello's, there's an argument that’s becoming more and more common, so much so that it's all Keith can do to brace himself before returning to the Castle. Coming home should not feel like entering another battle, but Keith arms himself with the knowledge that his actions are _worthwhile_ , then steels himself to meet his fellow paladins once more.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s here.” It starts with Lance, it almost always does these days. Keith knows it’s because the Blue Paladin has never been able to keep from making a snide remark when it involves Keith, but he doesn’t have time to linger on the thought when Pidge is already beginning their own tirade.

“Where were you!? You’re never here when we need you anymore. Hunk almost died this time, and maybe that wouldn’t have happened if you’d actually, y’know, _been_ here!” Though not the first to speak, Pidge had been the start of the accusations, whether they meant to let them snowball or not. It’s not that Keith faults them, now that everything is changing. With him. With Voltron.

Where Pidge and Lance are vocal and indignant, Hunk is studious avoidance. He lets the other two do the talking (shouting) for him, and he never once lets his eyes stray near Keith’s own. Keith knows that more than irritation, what Hunk feels is hurt. The fact he does nothing to stop the arguments from escalating the way he might if the topic were something more mundane is telling enough about how he feels about the situation.

Shiro is even harder to bear. The disappointment in his gaze is heavy, his mouth always set in a displeased line in-between words of reprimand. The lecture is worse, worse than Allura’s worried ones, or Coran’s anxious cut-ins.

It’s all the same as usual, all the same words and the same admonishments and the same irritation, until something else in Keith’s life changes.

He finds out that Shiro can pilot his Lion again.

Keith’s first thought is a vehement _good_ , because he had never wanted to pilot the Black Lion to begin with. And even then, just as he had been starting to get the hang of being the Black Paladin, of being the _leader of Voltron_ , Shiro had returned and swept the rug right from out under his feet.

Shiro’s reunion with Voltron had never been a bad thing. In fact, Keith had possibly wanted more than anyone in the team for the older man to come back. But if he had known that Shiro’s return would be the same as being shut down or discouraged by the entire team every time he tried to do the job _they_ had forced on him, then he would shamefully admit that he might have wanted it a little less.

He tunes in just in time to listen to Pidge recount how Shiro’s arrival had saved Hunk, followed by a biting reminder that Shiro can not only pilot the Black Lion again, but had done so when Keith should have because he _hadn’t been there_.

It sounds a lot like _we don’t need you anymore_.

Keith looks away from the group, suddenly tired. There is nothing he can give them besides the same half-hearted apologies and frustrated justifications because… because they’re right. They’re right, and now that Shiro can pilot Black again, they really _don’t_ need him anymore.

Admitting that hurts more than he had thought it would. They’re right, and he can’t stay here anymore. Not if he wants to keep finding himself and feeling like he’s really changing something, the way he does with the Blades. Voltron will always be home, but home isn’t always the safest place to be.

That’s when the idea that’s been flirting around the back of his mind for the past movement stops being an idea and becomes something more like a plan instead. That’s when he puts on the mask and never looks back. That’s when he leaves and vows to never show his face around again.

_No one will miss me,_ he tells himself. By the time he’s watching the castle of sleeping inhabitants disappear into empty space, he almost believes it, too.

  


* * *

  


“Do you ever miss them?”

They’re sitting in the canteen at headquarters, sprawled in too-small chairs around a wobbly table that’s seen better days. Then again, that can apply to most anything the Blade of Marmora has, including, somehow, the shitty space alcohol they’re drinking.

Keith pauses. Sentimentality is rare from Kolivan, but tonight is different. Tonight is the night Antok died, a mere deca-phoeb ago. Keith knows it. Kolivan knows it. All of the Blades know it. Kind of hard not to notice when their rebel leader’s been more irritable than usual, his usual patience and composure cracking at times when they normally wouldn’t.

The former paladin casts a wary glance in the older man’s direction, watching the slump in Kolivan’s frame and the distance in his eyes as they wander across the ceiling. Keith knows he should be careful about what he says regarding Voltron. In the deca-phoeb he’s been here, he’s done much for the Blade. That doesn’t mean it’s home yet.

Against all better judgement, because he has always been brash, he answers honestly. “Yeah,” he admits, and then pushes on to ignore the way his voice cracked at the end of the word. “Every quintant.”

It’s not until he says it that the truth of it hits, an open palm that slams down hard on his lungs and curls to fists to squeeze the breath from his body. It must show on his face, because Kolivan’s watching him with something like sympathy in his gaze now.

And Keith — Keith can barely feel himself scrambling to his feet, can barely feel the sting of his hands slamming the table. Pity has always made him bristle instinctively, but more than that, he’s floundering, unsure of what to do now that he knows. He’s spent the entire year throwing himself into missions and more missions just to avoid this exact realization, and now it was all in vain.

“That’s not fair,” he hears himself say, and it sounds angry and lost even to himself. “That’s not– You know how much they meant to me. You don’t get to– to look at me like– _that_.”

There aren’t a lot of things Kolivan could say to make Keith feel better, but the Galra picks the worst of them: “It’s alright. I miss him too. Every quintant.”

_Every quintant._

Missing Voltron is more than just missing family. It’s the constant ache of a hole in his soul, a bond that had once been filled by a Lion and easy banter and the possibility of being something more than friends. It’s missing Hunk’s bustling in the kitchen, and Pidge’s rambling tangents over coffee, and the warm weight of Shiro’s hand on his shoulder — _I’m proud of you_. It’s Allura and Coran’s antics and, and the space mice, and– and Lance being Lance.

_Every day._

And despite everything that’s happened, Keith manages to laugh when remembering Voltron. It’s a wet sound that ends in an embarrassing hiccup, but he’s too far gone in his emotions now to really care about what the leader of the Blade thinks.

Slowly, shakily, he sits down in his seat again. Reaches out to the chipped mug he’s barely taken two sips out of and downs the whole thing. Holds the ceramic out for more. Kolivan obliges before doing the same, draining his own plastic tumbler and portioning out some more.

“Does it get better?” It’s a stupid question to ask because the answer is always the same, but Keith asks anyway. It’s probably something they both need to hear tonight.

Kolivan answers like he’s reminding himself of something he’d forgotten until now. “Always.”

And maybe… Maybe that’s okay. For tonight, at least. Keith holds out his mug again, and this time, when Kolivan taps their cups together, they both drink, and missing Voltron becomes a little easier to bear.

  


* * *

  


When Keith encounters Team Voltron again, it’s by accident.

Deca-phoebs have passed. Kolivan’s been good at keeping Keith away from his old team despite the inconvenience, aware of old scars even if neither has said more than that one fateful night. Keith is older now, less brash than he had been in his youth, tempered to something sharper and calmer under Kolivan’s careful eye. The ache of missing Voltron is duller too. Some quintants, Keith even forgets he was ever part of it.

The first of the Paladins he catches sight of is Shiro, sword slicing through a Galran soldier with an ease that only comes with time and training. Of _course_ it’s Shiro, Keith will think later, wry as he looks back to the encounter.

The rest of the team register into his awareness soon after, all of them older and more battle-worn, but still as warm and as much a family as he remembered. Keith is almost glad he can keep his mask on before he realizes that his voice will give him away when he inevitably has to go speak with the Blade’s allies. If they even recognize it.

They don’t.

If there’s one thing his time with Kolivan has taught him, it’s to compartmentalize, and Keith shoves the sting irrecognition somewhere it can’t come out until both he and Voltron are off the Galra cargo ship. Only when he’s back in the now-familiar safety of headquarters does he double over, hands on his knees as he struggles for air and tells himself it _doesn’t matter_.

It doesn’t matter, and he was the one who left anyway, so he has no right to feel hurt about… _Because he had been trying to forget them too_.

He doesn’t know how Kolivan hears about the encounter, especially now that they don’t work as a pair as often anymore, but the man tracks him down a couple quintants later the moment he returns from his own mission destroying a Galran outpost.

Predictably, his once-mentor-almost-father-figure drags him to the canteen for a drink.

Kolivan doesn’t ask, and the only topics he brings up are inconsequential things, like the betting pool on how quickly Azdra and Talith will get together, but Keith still feels small and young under his gaze, heat rising to his cheeks as he tries to keep all the words about Voltron inside of him. He doesn’t say much, opening his mouth only to answer a few questions about how his mother’s been doing, but this doesn’t seem to bother the older man, who only keeps talking. Kolivan is good with things like that, Keith knows now that he's past all the secretiveness. It’s why the older man makes such a good leader.

It’s why the Blade is now home.

“You don’t have to keep me off missions with Them anymore,” Keith mutters at last, cutting off a small rant about how much of an idiot Cerbar, Kolivan’s newest partner and sort-of-student, can be.

Kolivan offers him an assessing glance. Keith meets the Galra’s eyes, knowing nothing in his own can betray him. He’s made his decision, even if he’s still just a little uncertain about it.

“Alright,” the older man decides at last, “but you’ll be pairing with me when you do.” Now _that_ ’s an idea Keith can get behind, and when he finally looks up from the same chipped mug he’d used the first time they’d done this heart-to-heart thing, it’s to flash a smile of gratitude.

“Just like the old days,” he says, and Kolivan smiles, slightly cautious but genuine.

“Just like the old days,” he agrees.

It won’t really be like the old days, when he had been eighteen and angry and had had to hold up the entire weight of the world, but that’s fine with Keith. Voltron might not need him anymore, but he doesn’t need Voltron anymore either. He might still miss it from time to time, but… Voltron isn’t the only thing in the galaxy worth Keith’s time. There will always be something, and even after all this time, Keith’s only just scratched the surface of who he is.

And despite everything that’s happened, things will be better. They always are.

**Author's Note:**

> For those not as well-versed with units of time in space (like me):
>
>> Movement = week  
> Deca-phoeb = year  
> Quintant = day
> 
>   
> And no, "just like the old quintants" just doesn't have the same ring as "just like the old days", so the latter it will stay.


End file.
